Spindrift

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I let myself softly into the hall and closed the door behind me with scarcely a sound. All was quiet down the far corridor. In slippered feet I sped along the red carpet to the turn where the stairs emerged. And as I ran I heard the faintest of sounds behind me—the whisper of another door closing. I whirled about, but the corridor lay as still and empty as ever, and all along the way the doors gave back their empty faces. Yet someone had heard me and looked out, then retreated.

  It didn’t matter. Even if someone had seen me running down the hallway, he hadn’t followed me and probably wouldn’t. Whoever it was, it couldn’t be Theo because her room was upstairs. I was no longer frightened as I’d been when I first wakened. That hand on my face and the whispered words had been a deliberate attempt to alarm me. Someone wanted me gone from Spindrift. But no one was going to hurt me physically, and I would not be frightened away by such tricks.

  A light had been left burning over the staircase, swung high in its cage from the ceiling. I gathered up the blue folds of my robe and ran up the stairs, flashlight in hand. At the top, where the corridor divided into right and left wings, I found I would need a light. The left wing, which housed Theo and Peter and those she wished to have near her, was lighted by a wall sconce. The opposite corridor which led to the Tower Room was dark.

  I turned on my flash and made my way softly toward the tower at the end of the corridor. The key was still in place and the door had remained unlocked. I turned the knob and let myself into the room. My flashlight picked out furniture, rested briefly on the stern visage of Arthur Patton-Stuyvesant, and then found a floor lamp I could turn on.

  But before I switched on the light, I made my way to the turret window and looked out toward Redstones, realizing for the first time that the Tower Room was directly over the room I occupied downstairs. So the view was nearly the same up here—only higher. That curious lambency still shone in the distant window, across the wide expanse of lawns between the two houses. For a little while I watched that unshrouded window, but no shadow moved across the glass, and I could not see into the room.

  Anyway, there was nothing I could do. The emptiness and loneliness of the Tower Room took my main attention, and now that I had come I did not especially want to stay there. I must hurry with what I had come to do.

  When I had turned on the lamp, I went to the closet and drew out my father’s cowhide suitcase that had been battered in a hundred places around the world. He never allowed anyone to paste on a sticker in his travels, but the scars of baggage handling in all those airports were there. I lifted the case onto the bed and opened it. This was one article I hadn’t searched in my earlier visit to this room.

  There were a few shirts he hadn’t unpacked, some socks and a red and black tie I remembered with a pang. How could a tie last longer than the man who had worn it? I felt under and around these things and then gave my attention to the zippered side pockets. But of course the police had been before me, and if there had ever been anything that would interest me, it was gone.

  I was about to start packing the case with my father’s clothes when the setting of a ring I wore caught on a bit of frayed lining in the lid of the case. As I released it I could feel something flat under my fingers. It took only a moment to slide out the envelope that had been tucked beneath the torn lining.

  I carried it over to the lamp and dropped into the armchair nearby. My father’s name had been scrawled on the envelope in Theo’s black writing. The letter had been opened and I slid the contents out of the slitted end. It was a single page of that same strong script.

  Dear Adam:

  If you continue along your proposed course I will see that everything you care about is destroyed. I would not have expected such treachery from Hal’s good friend.

  Yours,

  Theo

  Behind me someone tapped on the door, and I whirled about, startled, the letter burning my fingers. Whoever it was must not find me with this sheet of paper in my hands. I folded it quickly into the envelope and tucked it back beneath the torn lining. The tapping came again and I answered in growing alarm.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Bruce.” His voice came through the door. “Are you all right?”

  I felt relieved and at the same time a little resentful.

  “You can come in,” I said grudgingly, and he entered the room, a tail figure in a navy-blue dressing gown, with tan pajamas showing beneath. He smiled at me ruefully in response to my frown.

  “I have the room next to yours downstairs and I heard you moving about, heard you come into the hall. I guessed where you might be going and I was concerned.”

  “Besides, you’ve been told to watch me,” I said tartly.

  There was a brightness in his dark eyes and I surmised that like Theo he was not accustomed to being challenged. His was a position of power in the Moreland Empire.

  “I’m not used as a messenger boy,” he told me, “and what spying I may have done on occasion was at a different level.”

  I felt suddenly ashamed of my own suspicion. It was perfectly possible that this man had felt a slight human concern for a disturbed and unhappy woman. Once I had been generous and unsuspicious—but that girl was gone forever.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Everything in this place sets my teeth on edge. Thank you for looking out for me. But I’m really not ill any more and I can manage on my own.”

  “I’ll go away,” he said.

  I stopped him as he turned toward the door. “No—wait, please. Now that you’re here, I’d like to consult you about something.”

  As I spoke I knew my words were hasty and without plan. Quite suddenly I no longer wanted to be alone in this room, but what could I consult him about? I didn’t know him well enough to trust him with my encounter in the dark when that hand had touched my face, and I certainly was not going to tell him about the letter I had found. Yet the loneliness in this room and my terror because of what had happened here were creeping back. I didn’t want to be its solitary occupant.

  “Then I’ll stay, of course,” he said.

  “I came to pack up my father’s things,” I told him lamely. “Why don’t you sit down for a few minutes? I won’t be long, and then perhaps you’ll carry his suitcase back to my room for me. I’ll tell Fiona I have it in the morning.”

  He sat down silently, crossing his long legs. He was still waiting, I knew, for me to tell him what I wanted to consult him about. An inspiration came to me.

  “Is anyone occupying Redstones?” I asked as I took my father’s clothes from the closet and began to fold them into the case.

  “Not that I know of. It’s been empty for years.”

  “I looked out my window downstairs a little while ago and saw a light burning in one of the rooms.”

  That seemed to interest him. He went to the turret window and looked out toward the black roofs and chimneys of the red brick house. I came to stand beside him. Across the lawns the great house stood behind its iron fence like a ghost of itself in the moonlight, more ethereal than solid, but the interior light was gone. Every window showed a blank of darkness.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said. “There’s no light there.”

  Something in his voice made me uncomfortable. It doubted me.

  “There must have been someone there to put out the light I saw,” I protested. “It was down there in that lower room toward the front of the house.”

  “Probably the moonlight striking a windowpane,” he said. “You’ll see that effect “sometimes.”

  I didn’t think it had been the moon, and the effect wasn’t there now, though the moon was climbing the sky. I felt suddenly faint and shivery—one of those spells that used to come over me in the hospital and which I hadn’t suffered for a long time. The very faintness frightened me—I couldn’t go back to those days! As I moved from the window, I stumbled, and at once his arm came about me, supporting me, helping me to a chair. He looked anxious and a little distraught himself, as t
hough rescuing fainting maidens wasn’t in his line.

  “Would you like a drink of water?” he asked.

  I took myself in hand and sat up straight. “No—I’m all right. It’s just foolishness. So much seems to have happened today. And—and this room—”

  “Hadn’t you better stay away from it until you are stronger?”

  His very words strengthened my resolve. “No! If I’m going to be like this, I’ll come here every day until I get over it. I won’t be faint. I won’t be sick. I won’t be sent back to that place!”

  He was bending over me with a certain anxiety in his eyes and he touched me lightly on the cheek with one finger. “I don’t think you’ll be sent back. I think you’re strong enough—if you’ll just give yourself time. Be a little lenient with yourself.”

  His finger seemed to burn my cheek, bringing my senses tingling to life as they had not been for a very long time. I turned my head from his touch and was aware of his slight amusement. I suspected that this was a man quite accustomed to conquests when it came to women, and I didn’t mean to be one of them. The portrait on the wall gave me a quick topic of conversation, under which I could hide my moment of discomfiture.

  “Theo says you’re related to the Patton-Stuyvesants. Did you know Arthur?”

  He grimaced slightly, looking up at the picture. “The relationship is a dubious distinction. Zenia was my great-aunt on my mother’s side, and we used to visit her sometimes when I was small. But Arthur was gone long before I was born, and I only remember Zenia as a very old and somewhat eccentric lady. She fascinated me.”

  I was glad Bruce had picked up the gambit. “In what way?”

  “She was always promising to tell me secrets and I used to have a pleasantly creepy feeling about her. I suspect that she took on more than one lover in the early days, and that she probably drove poor Arthur up the wall. Have you ever seen her sitting room?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll show it to you sometime. Theo remembers her in the great days and she had the whim of leaving Zenia’s room untouched.”

  I’d recovered myself by this time and I stood up. “I’ll get back to my packing now,” I said, feeling my knees wobble only a little and commanding them silently to be steady.

  Bruce helped me, not troubling me with idle talk, simply bringing. Adam’s things from the closet, from the desk, from the bathroom, and as I put them away I felt an unexpected warmth of gratitude just for his calm presence and his silence. He did not intrude on my sorrow for my father or on the feelings of recognition that stabbed through me as I handled Adam’s worn possessions. I welcomed such pangs. Not to feel them would be to forget, and I owed it to Adam Keene not to let his death—or the possible cause of it—ever be forgotten.

  “Do you know if my father’s wrist watch was found here that day?” I asked Bruce.

  “I think Theo has it.”

  “Why? It would mean nothing to her. A Japanese friend gave it to him when he was in Yokohama one tune, and he was quite fond of it.”

  “If you’d like to have it, I’ll try and get it for you,” he said.

  Bruce puzzled me. Why was he helping me? Why had he obtained the key for me, and why was he now offering to recover my father’s watch?

  I spoke the word aloud bluntly. “Why?” I asked.

  For a moment he stared at me and then, unexpectedly, he laughed. “Don’t you know?” he said.

  “I don’t know anything. I don’t see why you should put yourself out for me. Unless this is something Theo has told you to do.”

  This time I’d angered him. His face darkened and he stared at me so coldly that I could hardly believe I had seen warmth in his eyes earlier.

  “I admired Adam,” he said. “I’m not altogether sure I admire his daughter. If you’re ready with that case, I’ll carry it back to your room.”

  He had put me down thoroughly and I felt disconcerted and annoyed with him and with myself.

  “Thank you,” I said coolly, and slammed down the lid of the case. Then I drew my robe more closely about me and walked past him to the door. He followed me down the corridor, not walking beside me, but staying in my wake, like a bellhop showing me to my room, I thought scornfully.

  But he was no bellhop, and when we’d gone downstairs and reached my door, he set the suitcase down with a bit of a thump, told me a grave “Good night,” and vanished through the next door. I wrestled the big case into my own room, still feeling at odds with myself. It had been a long time since I had met a man who had left me feeling so unsettled and unsure. I was accustomed to Joel’s absolute predictability, and I didn’t know what to make of a man whose actions I couldn’t fathom, whose thoughts were a mystery. There was no way to tell whether he was friend or foe.

  Carrying the suitcase into my room had made a noise as I bumped it on the door, and before I’d had time to get back in bed, Joel was tapping on the panel between our rooms.

  “Is anything wrong?” he called.

  “No—nothing. I’ve just been sleepless.”

  He opened the door and a sliver of light from his room fell into mine. “You’ve been up, haven’t you?”

  “It’s all right. I’m just going back to bed.”

  “Where were you? I called to you a little while ago and there was no answer.” Here it was again—the watching—and I couldn’t help but be suspicious.

  I hadn’t wanted to tell him where I’d been, but now I had to. “I went to the Tower Room. Since I couldn’t sleep, I packed my father’s things.”

  This seemed to disturb him and he came into the room and turned on a lamp. I didn’t want him asking questions, probing my emotional state, and I got into bed with my robe still on.

  “I’m all right,” I repeated. “Don’t fuss over me.”

  He stood beside my bed, more persistent than sympathetic. “What awakened you, Christy?”

  Abruptly I decided to fling the truth at him and see what he made of it.

  “Someone came into my room. Whoever it was touched my face and told me to be quiet, told me to go away from Spindrift.”

  His incredulity was evident. “Oh, come now—not this again, Christy! You’ve been free of such imaginings for weeks.”

  “I can go even further,” I told him, my voice hard. “When I looked out toward Redstones there was a light over there in a lower window. A light in an empty house, Joel.”

  At once he went to push the draperies aside, and I spoke quickly. “You won’t see it now. It’s gone.”

  Nevertheless, he stepped out on the balcony, looking out toward Redstones.

  “There was a light,” I said and felt the tightening of my muscles against his disbelief.

  When he had closed the draperies he came back to my bed. “Can I get you something to help you sleep, Christy?”

  “I don’t want anything. Except for someone to believe me!”

  Obviously, he couldn’t give me belief and his eyes were evasive. Resentfully, I tried a new attack.

  “Joel, do you know that your mother was threatening Adam about something?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was accusing him of some sort of treachery.”

  “You’d better tell me what you’re talking about.”

  But I had no intention of showing him the note or explaining any further. I had just wanted to see what sort of reaction I might get from him.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Unless you can tell me something about it, I’ll try to go to sleep now.”

  He waited a moment longer and I could sense his increasing disbelief in everything I said. With a shrug he gave up, turned out the lamp and went away. The strip of light from his door narrowed, disappeared, and my own room was enveloped again in darkness. I sat up and took off my robe. Then I slipped out of bed and ran to the window for a last look out toward Redstones. The house slept in the moonlight. All was quiet and there were no lights anywhere. I went back to bed and this time I fell soundly asleep out of sheer wearine
ss.

  It was late when I awakened in the morning. Sunlight was bright outside, but except for that one balcony window, my room was dim with drawn draperies. I lay quietly for a little while, trying to orient myself.

  I thought of Peter first, and of how I must work out some time with him every day. Then I thought of those four things I dared tell no one else about. The touch on my face—which I had better dismiss as a dream. It seemed too incomprehensible that anyone would come into my room and touch me. Someone might come seeking for some reason—though I couldn’t guess what—but such a search would certainly be secret, with an attempt not to rouse me. Of course if the intent had been merely to frighten me, it had briefly succeeded.

  Next there was the light I had seen in a lower window of Redstones. Again, mystery, but this time none of my affair. Since Bruce had not seen it later, I had no proof that this was not another hallucination, and it was better not to mention it further—though I’d already told Bruce and Joel. I was curious about Redstones, but the house was of interest to me only as it interested Peter.

  The third and most ominous thing was the note from Theo to my father. What that meant was important and I needed to find out why she had written it. Though how I could go about investigating, I hadn’t the faintest idea. And there was still that strange “mutton fat” notation of Adam’s.

  As soon as I was up and dressed I removed Theo’s note from the lining in my father’s suitcase and hid it with the “mutton fat” slip in my handkerchief box. Then I went downstairs to breakfast.

  I far preferred the smaller room where breakfast and lunch were served to the formal dining room. It was a room of rose and cream. The walls were paneled and had been painted a warm ivory, while the oriental carpet was a faded rose, and so were the tapestries of a screen that hid the serving door and decorated the comfortable chairs around the informal round table. The mantelpiece was white marble with touches of gold, and a firescreen with an embroidered Tudor rose design stood before the empty fireplace. Over the mantel a portrait of the young Zenia—not a Sargent—looked down upon the room and there seemed to be mischief in her eyes and a sense of gaiety that had been lost in the Sargent painting.